This month, the Manchester Ship Canal, one of greatest infrastructure projects of the Victorian age, celebrates its 125th anniversary. The London house of Rothschild was one of main backers of the project, a legacy of support for ground-breaking innovation which continues today.

This month, continuing our delve into the archives of the Exbury Rothschilds, we look back 80 years to the golden age of opulent travel, with the Inaugural Coasting Cruise in May 1936 of the Queen Mary, one of the greatest passenger liners of the twentieth century.

For the Spring season, we look back to one of the enduring passions of the Rothschild family – horticulture and the creation of beautiful and inspiring gardens. On the 23 March 2019, Exbury Gardens in Hampshire opens for the season. Exbury, famed throughout the world for its rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias (and between the Wars, its orchids) is a stunning sight from March to August. This year the displays will be extra special as Exbury marks its centenary in 2019.

This month we explore the history of the world-famous gardens created by Lionel de Rothschild (1882-1942), “a banker by hobby – and a gardener by profession".

The eabh is calling for papers for the Archival Workshop Minting History: Financial History at Face Value, 21 June 2019, Bank of Russia, St. Petersburg, Russia.

This workshop is aimed at minting and financial institutions’ archivists, money museum curators and researchers. The extensive archives of mints are a treasure-trove of information often covering extended periods of time. Yet some of these archival treasures are only accessible to a handful of specialists or remain largely unknown to researchers and the public. This workshop aims to present these materials to a wider audience and make them more accessible to interested researchers and scholars.

In today’s fast-moving business environment, rapid access to accurate intelligence is critical. Protecting our information assets is a key responsibility of us all. But protection of information is not just a 21st century phenomenon. This month we look back to how the Rothschild business has historically employed methods to keep data safe and secure.

As we approach the festive season, we look back to the origins of the sending of cards as Christmas tradition, (started by one of the United Kingdom’s earliest archivists!), and feature a gallery of one hundred years of seasonal cards in the collection of The Rothschild Archive.

One hundred years ago this month, the Armistice ended fighting on land, sea and air, marking a victory for the Allies and a defeat for Germany in the First World War. This month, Deputy Archivist Natalie Attwood, cataloguer of the photographic collections of Robert de Rothschild, takes a look at his military service on the battlefields of Belgium and France. During November, the New Court War memorial will be on display in the main reception, New Court.